When missiles kill innocents

January 18, 2006

The U.S. missiles that struck the remote Pakistani village of Damadola last Friday unleashed three mighty forces. Angry Pakistanis nationwide demanded that their president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, sever his friendly ties to Washington. Humanitarian voices elsewhere decried the loss of innocent lives. And architects of the U.S.-led war on terror reacted, well, more with silence than with regret. Why so?

Initial reports said the raid targeted Al Qaeda No. 2 leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who purportedly had been invited to Damadola for a dinner marking a Muslim festival. But the claims of Damadola residents that only local people had died--including women and children--appeared to undercut that rationale. Had the U.S. launched an attack based on bogus intelligence?

On Tuesday, though, the Associated Press reported that provincial officials had released a statement that shrouded the assault in fresh mystery: "Four or five foreign terrorists have been killed in this missile attack whose dead bodies have been taken away by their companions to hide the real reason of the attack," the statement said. "It is regrettable that 18 local people lost their lives in the attack, but this fact also cannot be denied, that 10-12 foreign extremists had been invited [to] a dinner."

We can't begin to parse the internal Pakistani political pressures that may have led to that statement. Is Musharraf's government desperate to protect him from accusations that he's a U.S. puppet? Or was the attack a fair, and effective, strike that eliminated some of this country's Al Qaeda foes?

Every war death is unfortunate, and none more so than that of a noncombatant. Hard as it is to know yet what happened at Damadola, it's painful to reckon with any report that this country's missiles obliterated children.

A war against terror groups creates frightful confluences that defy our attempts to neatly define "collateral damage." That phrase, most likely a Vietnam-era euphemism that now has a permanent niche in our military lexicon, probably best translates as, "civilians we didn't mean to kill." Not much succor there for innocent victims.

But when terrorists infiltrate a civilian population, and when that population shelters them in its midst, then the killing of innocents becomes as inevitable as it is unfortunate. Consider the paradox at work here: Killing and intimidating civilians are the terrorists' twin motives; they intentionally kill innocents because the terrorists are powerless to defeat armies.

Speaking Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) summarized what many Americans may be thinking about the missile strike: "We apologize, but I can't tell you that we wouldn't do the same thing again. We have to do what we think is necessary to take out Al Qaeda, particularly the top operatives."

Damadola won't always be a mystery. The truth of who died, and why, is likely to emerge--to incriminate, or vindicate, both the U.S. and its ally Musharraf. Until then, we're left with a war strategy that shouldn't waver: Strive fiercely to eliminate terrorists and their sympathizers and, whenever possible, no one else.